Reply To: Energy Output – MW & GW

[JimmyT]

An interesting factoid is that the earth with its orbital velocity is more than half way out of the sun’s gravitational well. (Actually the figure is closer to 98%) That means that once you are out of the earth’s gravitational well, you would have to apply less acceleration (about 50 times less) to an object to eject it from the solar system then to plunge it into the sun.

I think that fourth generation molten salt reactors are a better way to dispose of long term nuclear waste anyway. They eliminate them by bombarding the wastes with neutrons. This causes them to decay into short lived isotopes and in the process of doing so they serve as part of the fuel.

One of the chief expenses of running nuclear fission reactors is the fabrication of the fuel rod Assemblies. This is a very labor intensive operation and one which is entirely eliminated in this type of reactor.

Also the radioactive fuel/salt mixture is not pressurized, so they have a safety advantage.

We could discuss many of the design details of this type of reactor, but I’m not sure that this is the appropriate venue.